When It's Real, You Fight
by secretindulgence24
Summary: SPOILER 4x08. Extension of the last scene. Elena realizes that emotional pleas like "Does this feel wrong?" won't keep Damon by her side this time. He needs more from her and she's finally willing to be honest with him. Will it be enough to convince him to stay?


**Good morning readers. :-) So I'm very much supposed to be studying, but after watching last night's episode, I had to get this oneshot out of me before I exploded. So I, like I'm sure many others have, wrote an extension to the final scene of 4x08. In case it hasn't already been made clear - SPOILERS follow. **

**I loved, loved, loved this episode and I have so much hope for my favorite couple in the world. This scene isn't a prediction of what comes next for them, but it is something that I think could happen for them. As much as I loved the closing scene, Elena using emotional pleas like, "Does this feel wrong?" isn't going to cut it for Damon. He needs answers and he needs them from her fast. **

**To all of you who sent me PMs about the episode -I will get back to you as soon as I can. Like I said - supposed to be studying right now. Instead I'm being very bad and posting this. But I definitely want to chat, so you'll be hearing from me shortly. **

**As shameless promotion - if you haven't read my multi-chap fic, It Starts With Goodbye, then - hey, maybe check it out. :-) I would love feedback on it. Chapter 13 just went up and I'll get the next chapter up as soon as I can. (This took precedence ;-) )**

**Warning - this has not been to a beta. The lovely Hannah Taylor1, my usual beta, responsibly went to work today and thus has not been around to peruse my procrastination one-shot. But she's still awesome and you should read her stuff. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing**

XOXO

"Does this feel wrong?"

Her palm against his face, his against her heart. They were connected in the way he'd always felt in his soul that they should be, that they were meant to be. She was standing in front of him, begging him not to go and it was everything he'd ever wanted. Elena wanted him, needed him… maybe – just maybe – even loved him.

And yes. It felt wrong.

"Elena…" He took her hand from his face and stepped back, feeling the first fingers of loneliness and heartbreak begin to curl around his mind.

Anticipating his next words, she shook her head. "Don't leave me, Damon. Please." Tears began to form in the beautiful, brown eyes he loved. "I need you."

"You _think_ you need me, Elena." He managed to force out the words. "But it isn't real. The sire bond…"

"Doesn't change how I feel." Her words were firm and she took his hand again, holding it tightly between hers. "Tyler hated Klaus when he was sired and he still hates him. All that changes was that Klaus was able to control his actions, and even that Tyler fought against. Damon, please. Don't push me away – don't sabotage this."

"It's too late for that, Elena." He pulled his hand from hers and turned around, lacing his fingers behind his head, "Sabotage is the name of our game. A vampire sire bond is a one in a million kind of a thing but it happened to us." He turned back toward her, not letting himself register the look of pain on her face. "I'm not sabotaging us. The entire universe is taking care of that for me."

"Do you love me?"

Her quiet question took him by surprise and he blinked at her. "Why would you ask me that?"

"Just answer the question, Damon. After everything – do you still love me like you once did?"

"_No,_ Elena." He advanced on her, taking her arms in his hands and looking down into her face, not bothering to mask any of the intensity radiating out of him. "I love you more. More than that night I returned your necklace, more than the night we both thought I was dying, more than at that stupid ball. I love you more than I even knew was possible." He shook her lightly, anger and resentment coursing through his veins. "Do you think I could walk away from you if I didn't?"

"Do you trust me?"

"Stop it." Damon let go of her and stepped back. "Don't make this harder, Elena."

"Yes, I will make it hard, Damon." She stubbornly advanced on him every time he took a step back. "If you're going to leave me then you're going to do it knowing that you're breaking my heart. I want you to see every tear and hear every plea and when you walk away from me I want you to remember that you're breaking your promise that you would never leave me again."

"_Elena_." He begged her to stop.

"And if you can leave me, knowing all of that," She shrugged, looking at him sadly. "Then maybe you aren't the man I love after all."

Anguish was the only word he could think of that would describe the horrible, all-encompassing feeling swallowing him alive. "You don't love me." He bit out the words, "You never did before you turned and if you think you do now then it's just the sire bond talking. Don't say the words again, Elena. I can't take it."

Determination lit her pretty face. "I love you, Damon. Do you hear me? I _love_ you."

He turned away from her, his eyes lighting on a book lying open on the table. Grabbing it on impulse, he ripped it in half and through it at the wall, taking dark satisfaction in the hole it left in the wall.

"Damon," She moved toward him, taking his face in her hands, "I know it's new to you – hearing those words. But feeling them is not new to me. That night on the bridge, when I died… I loved you then. I did.

Pushing her away, Damon shook his head. "You chose Stefan."

"I know." For the moment, Elena seemed to give up on touching him, reaching for him. "I loved you both. And I thought that if I loved you both I had to choose Stefan, that I owed it to him and to myself to try to get back what we had. He and I had history – that tipped the scales in his favor. I thought that I needed to choose him because once upon a time he had made me feel glad to be alive again."

In spite of himself, he found he was listening to her. When she reached for his hand again, her eyes on his, he let her take it.

"I was wrong, Damon. I thought first love meant strongest love, but it doesn't." She reached up and touched his face, drawing him into her gaze. "Stefan and I never were the same after that night and not just because I became a vampire. If it had been real between me and him then we would have figured it out. I was holding onto something that didn't exist anymore because I was afraid – of change, of making the wrong choice. I'm still a little scared even though I know I'm doing the right thing."

Tilting her head, she gently eased him closer. "Hold me, Damon. Please? I need to feel you right now."

Everything in him screamed no. Giving into her, even that much, would make what he knew he needed to do so much harder. And yet his arms didn't seem to share with Elena the same desire to obey him. They slid around her, cradling her against his chest. His cheek fell against her hair and he closed his eyes, wishing he could find some way to absorb her into him – to feel her against him always.

She pulled back to look at him, her hands sliding familiarly, possessively over him. "After I turned, all I wanted was you. I needed you to help me through this, to hold my hand and wipe blood from my chin and help me not hurt anyone." Looking up at him, she shrugged her shoulders. "Did you tell me to feel that way, Damon? Because if you did, then you must have compelled me to forget it, too."

He looked down at the ground, struggling against the feelings warring inside him. Hope and despair made ugly bedfellows – each making the other stronger, each skewing his thoughts.

"Did you, Damon?" She pressed him. "Did you tell me to feel closer to you than anyone else? Or was that just me not being able to deny what I felt anymore?"

"You wanted to make me happy." Damon forced the words out. "You knew how I felt about you and you wanted to make me happy because that's how the sire bond works. So you made me happy."

He never did anticipate her slaps, but this one really came out of left field for him. She stood there, fuming at him, tears gathering in her eyes again. "How could you say that?"

Lifting his hand to his jaw, he glared at her as he rubbed out the pain. "Say what? That you made me happy? I'm sorry, Elena… _please _forgive me."

"No," She turned away from him, her voice cracking. "How could you act like that happened between us that night was so cheap? I gave myself to you, Damon. More than I've ever given myself to anyone before – no restraints, no doubts, no looking back." She turned back to him, heartbreak in her eyes. "How could you turn us making love into cheap sex that I went along with because I knew you wanted to sleep with me?"

"Elena, no…" Guilt had him moving toward her, abandoning caution by taking her face in his hands, "That's _not _what I meant."

"It's what you said, Damon."

"Then I said it _wrong_." He told her firmly, "Elena, that night was…" His throat closed around the word, "perfect. It wasn't cheap and it wasn't just sex. Every touch… every kiss… I've never felt anything so…"

"Real?" She whispered the word, softening, wrapping her hands around his wrists as he held her. "Neither have I."

He swallowed hard, his protective instincts attempting to crush the hope slowly growing within him.

"When did you order me to do that, Damon?" Elena covered his hands with hers, easing them from her face and resting them against her chest, holding him to her. "When did you tell me I needed to break up with Stefan? Was it before or after you encouraged me to give him another chance because everything he did was for me?"

"Elena…"

"When did you order me to come to you that night? When did you order me to dance with you?" She paused, tilting her head as though she was thinking hard. "Oh – that's right. I told you I wanted to dance and all you did was hold out your hand to me – even that was my choice, Damon. Just like it was my choice to kiss you first, to take off your shirt first, to push you down on the bed first."

Slowly, she lifted his hands to her lips, kissing his knuckles. "I don't like the idea of a sire bond either, Damon. It's something we're going to have to work through. But it doesn't mean that I don't love you or that we can't still be as happy as we were yesterday morning." Her eyes lifted to his. "Please don't leave me. It won't do you any good because I'll just come after you. I'll fight for you until I get you back."

"I could ruin your life." He rasped, moving closer to her, caution fully thrown to the wind as he lifted one hand to brush the hair back from her face. "One thing phrased the wrong way, one bad fight where I say something I don't mean… we might not even realize what had happened at first. I nearly starved you to death without even realizing it."

"That won't happen again." Elena told him firmly. "We know now. I trust you. We'll work through it."

"The last vampire that was sired to me killed someone because I accidentally told her to and then spent seventy years counting bricks in New Orleans, waiting for me to come back and get her." His hand trailed over her face, his thumb brushing over her lips. "I don't want that kind of control over you, Elena. I've made you kill already. I don't want to turn you into a shell of the person you are, too."

"Then you won't. I don't know who this other vampire is, but I'm stronger than her. We're stronger than her."

She was fighting for him, pulling him closer as he pushed her away, breaking down his ever defense with the trust in her eyes and the commitment in her words. She made him believe - in himself, in her, and in them. She made him think that doing the right thing by her meant staying by her side and fighting through this next obstacle with her until they conquered it like they conquered all obstacles.

She made him believe that she really loved him. So how was he supposed to walk away from that? He had walked into his house with the full intention of erasing himself from her mind. Now here he was, holding her closer than ever, loving her more than ever, daring to believe in them more than ever.

"We'll practice." She gave him a small smile, drawing him out of his thoughts. "You'll tell me to do things and I'll resist you. It'll be like when you were training me to be a big, bad vampire hunter."

He tried for a smile, but wasn't sure he succeeded. "Elena, it might not be that easy."

She shrugged, "So it won't be easy. Damon, I've died and come back to life. Twice – in two years. I've been tortured and threatened and chased and kidnapped and eaten and broken-hearted and abandoned. I've taken potions and helped with spells and brought vampire hunters to life and staked originals with magic stakes…" Framing his face in her hands, she smiled into his eyes. "There's always a way and we always survive. If we can get through all of that intact than you and I can find a way around this sire bond."

"Elena…" Putty in her hands, he leaned into her, letting her hold him up for once as he wrapped himself around her.

"Don't leave me." She whispered in his ear, holding him close. "Please, Damon."

Burying his face in her hair, he breathed in her scent and gave in completely. "Never." His arms tightened around her and he pressed her to his chest, unable to get her close enough. His lips travelled over her hair until he finally pulled back, looking down into her trusting face. "It's you and me, kid." He tried to joke. "For as long as you want me."

Smiling, she rose up on her toes and kissed him, wrapping her arms around his neck. "I love you."

He kissed her back, reveling in the soft, sweet lips of the woman he needed more than air, more than blood, more than life. "I love you more."

"Mm…" Elena's mouth trailed over his jaw, "Sire bond can wait. Take me upstairs, Damon. Twenty-four hours without you is too long."

With that, at least, he couldn't agree more. Sweeping her up in his arms, he carried her up to his room and lay her down on his bed. As he joined her, he silently asked the universe to just let him be happy for once. Just let this be easy.

XOXO

**So I hope that was as cathartic for you as it was for me. As much as I'm loving this Delena stuff that's happening, my romantic side just wants some easy for them. More of Damon's smiles and his adorable little, "I'm happy" confessions. More, more, more. **

**Okay. Seriously off to study now. Though if you were to leave me a comment, I would totally take a break and read it. ;-) (hint, hint)**


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